


To the Rev

by photo100



Category: Midnight Texas (TV)
Genre: Episode S02E03, Episode Tag, Exhaustion, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/photo100/pseuds/photo100
Summary: Post-To Witch Hell and Back.After the memorial to the Rev, there's one more thing for the Midnighters to do. But Manfred was nearly drowned yesterday, banished some ghosts last night, was thrown across an office by an potentially evil skull in the morning and went to Witch Hell in the afternoon. He's ever so slightly exhausted and that's not always the best thing for a psychic to be in Midnight.





	To the Rev

**Author's Note:**

> I have never managed to write a one-shot before. I set out to but then I get caught up in plot and characters and there's a cliff hanger, oh look that looks like chapter 2. I can't do pretty little moments or angsty things or fluffy warm pieces that make you go ahh. Until now. I have now written a stand alone one-shot. It was meant to be whumpy but is more angsty introspective nonsense. I quite like the end though.

Despite the hour, they had all drifted to Home Cooking without discussion. They had scattered themselves around the large table and Olivia had produced a bottle of something from somewhere.  

Then Lem had started. It seemed only fair. He had been both the first and last to talk to the Rev. As he talked, sharing stories with an unusual fondness, the rest of them had relaxed: Bobo and Fiji stopped actively avoiding each other’s eyes, Joe and Chuy shifted closer to each other and Manfred found himself drifting. The smell of sulphur coated his nostrils and he wondered if it was just him or if the room actually stank of rotten eggs.

Sometime after Joe started, he noticed the leaf in the corner of the room that he and Fiji must have missed following their spell. As the angel went on about his own faith and how the Rev had helped him come to terms with his fall from heaven, Manfred remembered falling back into this world onto those leaves. The suffocating heat of Witch Hell had suddenly disappeared letting the tightness that had grabbed his chest when he had first stepped through the glowing door fade. He shivered, feeling cold.

Chuy followed Joe. Sitting calmly next to his husband on the night of a Devil Moon, he explained how the Rev had helped him keep his own demon in check, how the holy man had understood his daily struggle and just how much that had helped. Manfred’s thoughts drifted to his own gift. Everyone else was keeping something in: power, hunger or pain. They kept it locked up tight, scared to ever let it go. He alone was keeping it all out: stopping those who wanted to exert _their_ power, feed _their_ hunger or sooth _their_ pain from doing so through him. He was scared he'd lose himself even as his head throbbed keeping his walls up. Sometimes Manfred just wanted to let go.

When Fiji began saying how much the Rev had helped her after her aunt had died, how he had help her not lose control in her grief, Manfred had looked up and offered a smile. Today had been hard on her too. The double doors were open again now onto the rest of the restaurant. He could just make out Julie flirting from table to table, her ghostly hand ineffectively dusting them down. Julie had been a waitress until vampires had come to town and she still liked to tidy up after hours but tonight she was reminiscent of deformed witches reaching out from the shadows with clawed hands. Manfred turned away.

He let his exhausted eyes droop when Olivia started describing how the Rev had been one of her first friends: not a mark or a lover but just a friend who needed her as much as she needed them even if it had taken time for her to realise it. For the psychic, the usual howls of Midnight's ghost seemed louder than normal, but then again, they usually were when he was tired. It was definitely early rather than late now and after a full day and the previous night’s vanquishings, he could be forgiven for being exhausted. He could count the number of full uninterrupted night’s sleep since Colconnar on one hand. Back when the town had needed him almost as much as he needed them. Manfred closed his eyes.

Bobo had been next. The Rev had helped him understand the true meaning of the Bible and religion as opposed to the messed up twisted interpretations that he had grown up with: the importance of love, understanding and acceptance. Manfred thought about how important letting people in was. It had a different meaning for him but it had allowed Carolyn to find peace from her husband and even letting in the demons had saved the world. It had left a mark on him too, not just in their residue but also with their memories which surfaced now and again. The recent trip to one hell had summoned their hell and for a second, the psychic was in another burning inferno surrounded by screams of the dead and their desperate need for it all to end.

Bobo had finished and the still silence stretched. It was his turn.

Manfred opened his mouth and tasted death.

The ghost was in him and in control before he had fully realised what had happened. His hands were nearly around Fiji's neck when he managed to stumble back over his chair and into the wall behind him. With a grunted "No!", he forced the entity out, his body contorting before slipping down the wall.

It hadn't been a strong ghost: any other night, if he had been less tired, hadn't momentary slipped into memories that weren't his own... If any one of any number of factors had been different, it wouldn't have happened. Manfred let his head fall back against the wall with a thud and then immediately regretted it as the bump he got from flying across Kai's office that morning protested.

Lem and Joe were on their feet, Chuy and Bobo sat forward in concern while Olivia had one hand placed on Fiji's shoulder in comfort. Manfred had managed to wrestle control back before any harm was done but it wouldn’t have matter if he hadn’t: he couldn't have hurt anyone, the others wouldn't have let him.

He sighed, not moving from the floor. He breathed in the slightly greasy, aged smell of Home Cookin’ and bathed in its comforting warmth. His gaze shifted from the forgotten leaf in the corner to a smiling Julie to his concerned friends.

"Manfred?" It was Olivia, always cautious.

The first time Manfred had meet the Rev was the first time someone in this strange, messed up community of theirs had accepted his particular brand of weird. Without hesitation, he had given Manfred the holy water he needed to protect himself. Even if he later tried to claw his intestine out, in that one action he had been welcomed without question.

"The Rev helped you all accept yourselves, helped you all feel safer. He helped me realise that Midnight’s a place where I am accepted, where there are people who will keep me safe."

He didn’t move from the floor as he told his stories of Rev and the others sat back down.

Later, no-one mentioned how his words slurred and descended into mumbling as he went on before finally stopping altogether. And no-one mentioned how Bobo and Chuy had helped Joe carry him home, how Fiji had tucked him into his bed while Olivia placed two extra strength aspirin and a glass of water on his bedside table. And if Lem had spent the very last few hours of darkness sitting outside Manfred’s front door with one ear on the psychic and the other on the rest of the town, well, no-one mentioned that either.


End file.
